apps

I don’t like admitting it – I sometimes have a problem tracking my own debt. Ultimately, people like you and me do our best to handle our debt obligations. However, sometimes, it can just be too much. So, I began looking into various debt management apps. One app that I learned about, Undebt.It, really stood out to me. It’s a free debt management app that helps you to inescapably and efficiently track all of your debt.

Undebt.It Review: How It Works

Undebt.It is a debt calculation, tracking and payment planning app system. It allows you to efficiently input every debt payment obligation that you have in your life. Undebt.It is a powerful debt payment reminder service that stresses the need to pay off all debt. It’s essentially a de facto debt payment manager.

All you have to do is register on the site and input your basic information, like your income, budget, and debt information. The app helps you calculate how much you can realistically pay each month based on your income. You can create a personalized spreadsheet where your balances, minimum payments, and interest payments are calculated.

The app sets a reminder to pay bills based on your preferences. What impresses me about Undebt.It is that your sensitive financial information is secure because you don’t need to provide it. Yes, you must input debt repayment figures to create a chart. But, you don’t have to enter your bank account, credit card, or affiliated password information ever.

The Good

It’s free. The app creates debt reminder and tracking tables that help you visualize your upcoming payments. You can create debt repayment reminders based on customizable tier systems. The Debt Snowball system lets you pay off debts with the lowest balances as a priority. The Debt Avalanche method tackles debt with the highest interest. Or, you can focus on debts based on monthly payments or your debt-to-interest ratio.

Undebt.It lets you design your debt reminder system on your terms. The app allows you to track your spending and purchasing habits. You can study your spending habits to curtail new debt accumulation. Or you can check your credit utilization details. Undebt.It has many debt tracking features that help you pay off debt and better understand how you accumulate it.

The Could-Be-Better

Once you register and access your personal dashboard, the experience can be overwhelming. There are a lot of options, features and charts for you to peruse. You definitely must be committed to learning about the app. Not impossible, but a lot to absorb. Then again, have you ever put all of your bills together to understand them? Undebt.It’s layout may be confusing at first, but it is worth mastering so you can develop a system to help you reduce your debt.

My Verdict

I highly recommend it. It’s free, full of informative options, and is customizable to your debt reminder needs. You don’t have to input your sensitive financial information, just your debt amounts. Also, you can even upgrade to an app with extra features for a dollar a month. Undebt.It makes your debt reminders inescapable and efficient. Get it today. If you don’t manage your debt, it ends up managing you.

Since the invention of smartphones, people have become accustomed to knowing where people are all the time. People check-in places on social media, have geographical filters on photos and even share locations with other people. And now there are apps to track other people’s whereabouts — although some might call this usage spying.

Why Would You Need a Tracking App?

Many people use the six apps listed below to track their husbands and wives, especially when a divorce may be imminent: getting proof of a spouse’s infidelity can make a big difference in a case that may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Others use these apps to keep tabs of their children after school or their employees while they are on the clock.

mSpy

The app mSpy is compatible with Android and iOS.

It includes call and text monitoring, GPS tracking, chat messenger monitoring and a keylogger.

Reviews show that mSpy’s email support and live chat assistance is available. You can also purchase a VIP 24-hour customer support for a small fee.

Mobistealth

Mobistealth is available on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Nokia Symbian.

The program includes messenger tracking, monitoring Internet browsing, the ability to watch the other person’s multimedia files, view their emails, check out their calendar activities and track their calls.

This service offers live phone support for customers.

Spyera

Spyera is available for download on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Nokia Symbian.

The app allows you to capture the other party’s calls, messages, images, emails, multimedia texts, GPS location, videos, contacts. The information is sent to your online user account where you’ll be able to check it any time you have a cell phone and internet connection.

Find My Friends

You can choose from among your contacts who you’d like to interact with and track, but the other person has to enable the feature on their end for you to be able to track them.

If you have trouble with the app, you’ll need to call Apple support, which is available 24/7.

AccuTracking

AccuTracking is one of the oldest phone tracking apps out there — it’s been around for more than 10 years; however, it’s still only available for Android phones.

The app costs $5.99 a month and only allows for phone tracking. It does not have some of the other advanced features that the apps listed above have.

Customer service isn’t extremely accessible; you have to submit an online ticket and wait for a response to any issues you may have.

While many of these apps require the other party’s permission to track them, not all apps require the permission of the second phone. Whether you are monitoring your child or spying on your spouse, there’s an app for that.

Readers, have you tried any tracking apps yourself — or does reading about them make you want to?

Millennials are probably too young to remember sending friends money in the mail. A relative may still occasionally send checks for a birthday or special occasion. Today though, if two friends are at a bar and one spots the other $20, no one wants to wait for a check in the mail.

What happens when 10 BFFs go out to dinner and the waiter forgets to split the check? It would be easier for one person just to stick it on a card and let everyone reimburse their share. But how long will that take?

What if the kid in college sends a text that they need cash for… “textbooks.” Doing a wire transfer is a bulky, expensive process. Waiting for a check may not be a good option.

Everyone has been through the annoying, “I’m making a Starbucks run,” at work, and all the co-workers want in. Juggling all that cash, the orders, and then making change? Not.

Turns out, there’s an app for all of that.

Sending Money is Easier with these apps.

Settling up just got easier. That’s because some really smart people came up with some very cool apps to handle money reimbursing and payment between friends, coworkers, and family — or total strangers if that’s how you roll. Here are the top six best apps on the market for sending and receiving the (digital) green stuff.

1. Taking things alphabetically, let’s start with Chase Quickpay (with Zelle). The “Chase” in Chase Quickpay is, of course, the mega-banking, mortgage and financial services company that rules the world. It goes without saying that this app is pretty good at moving money. Chase Quickpay lets U.S. bank account holders send and receive money online. Supermoney reviewed the app and listed some of the pros and cons of Chase Quickpay, including:

PROS

$0 fees

Secure

Large network of participating banks

Must be a Chase customer

Can transfer cash with just someone’semail or phone numberaccount

CONS

Limits how much you can transfer

Takes up to five days

Easy and fast

No international transfers

Senders/receivers must have a bank

If both parties use the Zelle app, and both have Chase — voila! — this is one quick, free money transfer. Some of the participating banks include: Bank of America, Fifth Third Bank, USAA, Capital one, First Bank, USBank, Citi, PNC and Wells Fargo.

This is a surprisingly simple app that’s free to download and, unlike Chase the bank, won’t fee-you-to-death for every transaction. You can enroll through the Chase app or go online to sign up.

2. As if Facebook doesn’t already rule the planet, there is now Facebook Messenger, which does all kinds of things, including transfer money between users. Using the service requires connecting a U.S. bank card with a debit feature to a Facebook account. Just open up a Messenger chat and hit the $ icon at the bottom. There’s a simple walk-through to initiate the transfer and it will send and request money. Like the Chase app, it can take up to five days to process. The bad news is there’s no canceling once the money has been sent; conversely, users cannot decline funds sent from someone else. But really, who’d want to do that?

3. PC Magazine says, “The straightforward interface of the new Google Walletis definitely an improvement.” That’s because the old Google Wallet had a lot of bulked up business features that they discarded for the new lean, mean money transfer app. On the plus side, the free app can send money via texting – whoa. But on the negative, it has a lot of debit and credit card fees (2.9% on any transaction). Users just need a Google account to get started. It’s easy to add multiple credit or debit card data on an account. Out of all the apps, Google Wallet has a hefty transfer limit of $9,999 per transaction, which is more than Square Cash and Venmo. Perhaps the real point of differentiation for Google Wallet is its speed — for most people the immediacy of a Google Wallet transfer is worth the fees they charge.

4. PayPalreally is kind of a buddy. According to Nerdwallet, the P2P service has more than 200 million active users. They are all busy transferring money to and from from bank accounts or a PayPal stash. PayPal offers a free transfer service between a bank accounts or with a Paypal balance. Using a credit of debit cards has a 2.9% fee of the transfer amount plus 30 cents. Transfers of up to $10,000 are allowed. (Take that, Google Wallet!) The PayPal app works on any mobile device and it takes about 24 hours typically to transfer.

5. Square Cashprobably has the easiest user interface for mobile of any of the P2P vendors. The app links with credit or debit cards to send cash via iOS or Android. Debit card transfers are free but there is a 3% fee for credit card transactions. It includes a wallet feature that lets users hold money similar to PayPal. It takes a day to move this money to a bank account, however, which is fairly standard for most of the P2P apps on the market. An instant money transfer can occur, for an additional 1% fee.

6. Most reviewers say Venmo is the best P2P app on the market today. Nerdwallet describes it as offering, “free, easy, socially engaging money transfers.” Digital Trends pegs it as their favorite P2P app. It currently has a 4.7 star rating in the Google Play store and 4.5 on iTunes. The app is free to use but does charge a 3% fee for credit card transfers. This is an exceptionally easy app to use and it boasts “bank level” encryption to protect transactions. In a unique twist, Venmo has a transactions feed that posts who is sending what to whom — but it doesn’t list the dollar amounts. The social element to Venmo makes it more than just a utilitarian person to person money transfer application.

P2P Apps Make Paying Up Easier

The old days of waiting for reimbursement from a friend are over. These are some of the best-rated P2P apps for mobile that make transferring money between friends and family easy and often, free. It’s just another example of how technology can help people communicate and collaborate in their daily lives.

PocketSmith is a budgeting and personal finance software tool that allows you to take control of your money. It allows you to take control of your money through forecasting, or showing you what your finances will look like in the future if your current trends continue. With calendars, budgets, pie charts, and graphs, PocketSmith offers a one-stop shop for all your financial tracking needs. But does it deliver?

How PocketSmith Works

When you create an account, you have to pick one of PocketSmith’s three available plans. Their Basic plan is free and features manual imports and limited budgets, accounts, and projection spans. Their Premium plan comes up to $9.95 a month, though the price is only $7.49 per month if you pay annually instead of monthly. This plan makes bank feeds automatic, as well as transaction importing and categorization. It features unlimited budgets and more forgiving limits on accounts and projection spans. Their Super plan comes in at $19.95 a month and $14.16 per month when paid annually, and offers all the Premium features plus unlimited accounts and a larger projection span.

Setting up PocketSmith requires three simple steps: adding bank accounts, categorizing your transactions, and creating your budgets and forecast. Everything is smooth sailing after you complete these time-consuming steps. PocketSmith allows Premium users to connect bank accounts. This sets up an automatic bank feed in your account. PocketSmith also offers manual import of bank files or files from popular apps such as Mint and Quicken.

You can also use PocketSmith without importing sensitive bank files. To do this, you can either enter your transactions manually, or you can use the Forecast Calendar to run your budget with just a basic idea of your income and expenses.

If and when you do have your transactions in the program, you can categorize them. Users with automatic categorization need only set up categories and PocketSmith will categorize in the background. If you do not have automatic categorization, you can create and assign categories for your transactions on the web page and in the mobile app.

Finally, when you have your financial information and transactions uploaded, you can create your budgets and start forecasting. Budgets correlate with your categorized transactions, helping you maintain control of your financial goals.

PocketSmith’s Drawbacks

While PocketSmith has a plethora of features, it also has its drawbacks. In my experience, the biggest drawback was the painful simplicity of the app. When you log into your account with the app – because you cannot set up your account in the app, only on your computer – you can view your accounts, manually categorize transactions, and view your budgets. While these are all essential features, they fail to represent the scope of information you can access via the web. In our smartphone world, it only makes sense to have as many standard features as possible available within the app.

PocketSmith also offers few alerts for account balances and budget limits. Given its close monitoring of your accounts, alerts about such things as unusual spending, or even notifications and reminders from your calendar, would be a smart and useful addition to PocketSmith’s tools.

Is PocketSmith Worth It?

The short answer is probably. Although it is not perfect, the software is unique and offers a variety of features. If you are looking for a good start to balancing your personal finances, PocketSmith’s free plan can help you get started creating and tracking budgets with as little or as much detail as you choose. If you have been balancing your finances and budgeting for a while, but are dissatisfied with your current tools, PocketSmith’s Premium and Super plans may offer the added tools and analysis you need. Regardless, PocketSmith offers a positive user experience and a variety of useful features sure to meet your financial tracking needs.

Modern lives center around cell phones, so it only makes sense that our financial lives should as well. But how can you decide which financial apps are best for you? Here is a list of the ten best personal finance apps available.

Best Free Personal Finance Apps

Stash offers a simplified approach to investing. You can start with an investment as low as $5, as well as receive personalized guidance for your investments. Stash also offers financial and investment education for users looking to learn more about investing. Stash is free on both iTunes and Google Play.

Mint offers a one-stop-shop for all your personal finance needs. It helps you track and pay bills, budget, track investments, and even check your credit score. Mint is free on both iTunes and Google Play.

Paribus is a finance app that helps you “find” money. Essentially Paribus scans your inbox that you use for online shopping. Once the service has scanned all your receipts it checks price match guarantees, other deals and even if the item went on sale shortly after. Then Paribus contacts the company about you getting your money back. You don’t lift a finger. Paribus is free on iTunes with a Google Play app in the works.

If you are an investor you may want to turn your attention towards Personal Capital. Personal Capital can give you a snapshot of your investments, savings and even help you plan for retirement. Personal Capital is free on iTunes and Google Play.

Best Paid Personal Finance Apps

Not all personal finance apps come for free though. Some apps are a bit more involved and, therefore, cost a little more than others. In some cases, though, it may be worth it.

BillMinder organizes your bills with reminders so you are always paying bills on time. You can also track where your money goes with comprehensive charts and graphs. The app even offers syncing capabilities across households. BillMinder is $1.99 on iTunes and $2.99 on Google Play.

Pennies is an everyday money tracker that provides you with daily budgets. It helps you keep track of your spending health, as well as offering syncing across all devices and compatibility with any major currency symbols. Pennies is only available on iTunes for $3.99.

HomeBudget with Sync

HomeBudget tracks expenses, income, bills due, and account balances. The app offers budgeting support and analyzes your expenses and income. All of its features are integrated, and the app has a Family Sync option, which allows a group of devices within the household to exchange information and work within a single budget. HomeBudget with Sync is $4.99 on iTunes and $5.99 on Google Play, and also offers a free version with limited features on Google Play.

Money Pro

Money pro offers bill planning and account tracking, and can be used at home and even at businesses. Among its many features are account reconciliation, split transactions, detailed reports, and multiple profiles. Money Pro is $4.99 on iTunes and free on Google Play.

Income OK

Income OK is a basic app that allows you to input your income and expenses. It also has a partner app, Expenses OK, which just offers expense tracking. Income OK also offers a widget feature for easier access to information and input capabilities. Income OK is only available on iTunes for $0.99.

With so many apps out there, it is difficult to know which ones are best for you. Try downloading some of the best personal finance apps out there, and you are sure to find the right fit for your financial needs.

Search-engine giant Google is in the news just about everyday (and if they aren’t in the news, you are using their site to read the news). They are steadily making strides to develop driverless cars, change the way the everyday man and woman looks at technology and even give significant amounts of money to local charities.

However, it is not everyday that you read about Google banning apps from its Play Store. Google offers a plethora of different applications for your Android phone, tablet or even your computer, however, the company does have a few rules when it comes to what can and cannot be sold in their store and one group just crossed that line.

The company, known for its progressive strides, made a move to ban a Taliban app on April 1. The app, said to have been developed by the Taliban, was banned from the Google Play Store because of a violation of one of Google’s biggest rules: no hate speech.

According to news sources, the group that developed the app is a fundamentalist group called Alemarah. The app was released in order to grow the group’s audience and their following. It held a compilation of videos and news about the group’s movement. One of the people from the group said they were simply trying to use technology to make their audience more global.

Alemarah was under the impression that they had “technical difficulties” and took the app down to fix it, however, Google officials said that the group clearly broke the rules. The guidelines for apps in the Play Store are pretty clear. “We don’t allow the promotion of hatred towards groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity,” the policy reads.

Google has told news sources that they remove any and all apps that violate these terms, however, the exact reason for the removal of the Taliban app was not clear. The company has refused to comment on any specific issues with the app thus far. Google officials simply said, “While we don’t comment on specific apps, we can confirm that we remove apps from Google Play that violate our policies.”

Sources say that the app was discovered by Site Intel Group, Inc. Site Intel Group is a company that works to identify terrorist and jihadist groups throughout the world and determine threat levels.

The fact that the app made it through Google’s most-recent safety net is a concern to some. Normally, Google’s Play Store has been open to different apps and they were only taken down after they were labeled as dangerous. Google recently put into a place “pre-screening” process. The fact that this Taliban app was able to make it through that process is difficult for some people to understand.

How the app was able to get through any type of screening process is still unclear. The technology company aims to better screen apps moving forward and continue to implement the screening process on apps to come and be sure they follow all of the rules laid out by Google.